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Patti Prochko is tired of seeing the roadway near her Hazle Township home being used as illegal dumping grounds.

Countless televisions, pieces of furniture and tires have been accumulating along most of Stockton Mountain Road and along parts of East Diamond Avenue.

She and her husband frequently clean parts of the roadway near her home, but are unable to keep up with people who are ditching unwanted items along the roads.

"People are just disgusting," she said. "I guess they don't pay their trash bill and use the back roads in the middle of the night and dump."

Officials from Hazle Township and the state Department of Transportation haven't been doing enough to combat illegal dumping - and aren't living up to a promise that she says was made during a televised news interview about a year ago to rid the highway of debris, she contends.

"This has been going on for years," she said. "It just gets worse every year. On (East) Diamond Avenue, it's a disgrace to even drive through it."

Township supervisors Chairman William Gallagher said crews have been removing televisions and tires that have been discarded along Club 40 Road. State officials are responsible for maintaining Stockton Mountain Road, he said.

Prochko said that her husband filled 22 bags of trash along a stretch of the road near her home in conjunction with the Great PA Cleanup last weekend. The progress he made had been offset within a day - when new piles of trash were dumped along the roadside, she said.

The township delivered about 500 tires that were dumped along Club 40 Road to PennDOT on Monday and Tuesday, Gallagher noted.

State officials ran out of room to store the unwanted items and the township has at least 50 more tires to deliver, Gallagher said.

"They ran out of room there," he said. "We're getting inundated."

Since the township doesn't have its own police force, it relies on state police for coverage.

Prochko, however, said that she has rummaged through trash bags and reported to state police the names of people that were found on receipts.

State police told Prochko they couldn't prosecute because she didn't catch those people in the act of dumping.

Calls to PennDOT went unanswered, she said.

"Last year at this time Hazle Township and PennDOT went on TV and said they would take care of the problem and clean it up," she said. "It was never touched."

State officials have been doing their part to remove litter along Stockton Mountain Road, removing "tons of garbage and a few hundred tires" from the highway last year, according to PennDOT spokesman James May.

"Bottom line, PennDOT has cleaned up a LOT of junk from this area but people continue to litter," May said in an email to the Standard-Speaker. "Litter enforcement is a law enforcement issue, and PennDOT has no law enforcement capabilities."

State officials, however, haven't removed debris from the roadway since October, May noted.

May said that he spoke with a PennDOT county manager, who believes law enforcement is key to remedying the problems.

The community and local news media could also "rally some support" for a cleanup and the state could possibly assist in removing trash from the roadway, May said.

Prochko isn't the only township resident with concerns for illegal dumping.

Forest Hills resident Rich Wienches said that more than a half-dozen television sets were dumped along parts of the highway over the past two weeks.

Drop-off electronics recycling programs such as the May 3 event planned in neighboring Hazleton City have organized with Brenner Recycling, won't solve the problem, Wienches said.

Even though people living in Hazleton and surrounding communities pay for curb side trash collections, state laws have barred people from placing electronics out with regular trash, Wienches said. Neither the law nor local communities give residents many options when it comes to discarding electronics - and often results in illegal dumping, he contends.

Wienches believes that officials in Hazleton, West Hazleton and Hazle Township should come up with a plan for accepting unwanted electronics.

Having the municipalities provide a dumpster for electronics waste could cut back on illegal dumping, he said.

"People can bring TVs at their convenience - not the municipality's convenience," he said. "People dump TVs around all the time. They're not going to sit and look at a big TV on the front porch, waiting for a municipality to have a pick up. They want to get rid of it."

The upcoming city recycling program accepts most electronics at no cost, but people must pay $20 for each of the older, tube television sets they want to dispose of.

"They're not going to pay $20 to take a TV (to a recycling program)," Wienches said. "They're going to put it in a car and dump it down the street."

sgalski@standardspeaker.com

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